Tip-Toeing Through Van Til’s Apologetic with Jon Kaus

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and I have had a busy weekend.

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I just came back from Indiana, back home to North Carolina. I was speaking at the Rethinking Hell Conference, which was super fun.

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I got to meet Chris Date, which anyone who is familiar with the world of apologetics and theology, he's got a great channel over there at, well

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I guess, I the ministry that he runs is

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Rethinking Hell, and I was one of the speakers and I was representing the traditional view of hell, the good old fun eternal conscious torment perspective, not a very positive topic to discuss, but I was representing the traditional view and I was able to also represent a presuppositional take on how to interact with objections against Christianity within the context of discussions on hell.

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So it was super awesome and won the video of the presentation I gave is available.

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I'll make sure to share larger portions of it as I've just shared a clip on my YouTube channel.

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Folks definitely want to check that out. Well also, just to give a heads up, it is

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November. In December, I think December 1st, I'll be having Jeff Durbin on, which

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I'm super excited about. I tried for a really long time to get him. He's super busy. As you guys know, if you're familiar with Apologia Church and the ministries that they're involved in,

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I'm happy that that Jeff is going to be coming on. It's locked in. It's happening, so super excited about that.

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Also, I just want to, and I'm going to be saying this throughout our show today, just reminding people of the conference, the

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Epic Online Presupp Conference. I will be speaking. I have Dr. Chris Bolt, Dr.

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Jason Lyle, Matt Slick of CARM .org, and Joshua Pillows. We're going to be covering various elements of the presuppositional approach.

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I'm giving an overview. Jason Lyle is speaking about how to use evidence within a presuppositional framework.

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Chris Bolt will be talking about the history of transcendental arguments and the uniqueness of Van Til's argument. Matt Slick will be discussing how to apply presuppositional methodology to the cults, and Joshua Pillows is going to walk us through how to answer objections to the presuppositional methodology, and he'll cover more popular objections as well as some of the more philosophically rigorous objections as well.

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So I just want to let people know, I'm going slowly on purpose because I know people are coming in, but there are eight days to sign up.

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Eight days to sign up. The conference is on November 12, but there are eight days to sign up.

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What you want to do is you want to go to revealedapologetics .com, click on the Presupp U drop -down menu, and you could

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RSVP your spot to see the conference. It's going to be from 10 a .m.

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in the morning to 4 30 p .m., and each of the speakers will have time slots, so when you get that schedule, when

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I send that schedule out, you'll know the times to come and listen to each respective speaker.

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So this also is an attempt to raise money for the ministry. It is expensive to maintain a website, to do what

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I'm doing, and to do it well. So if you are interested in supporting Revealed Apologetics, this is one of the ways you can do it, and it would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

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Alright, well, without further ado, let me remove this from the screen, and I am super excited to have my guest on today.

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My guest name is Jon Kaus, and I heard a lot about him from multiple sources.

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There was some buzz on YouTube about this young guy who's really good at explaining a presuppositional approach, and of course

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I had the author of Every Believer Confident.

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I think his name is Mark Farnham, I think, and he also spoke very highly of my guest tonight.

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So I'm super excited to have him on, and he's going to unpack for us Van Til's apologetic as we tiptoe through the transcendental argument.

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But before we do that, welcome to Revealed Apologetics, Jon. It's awesome to have you.

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Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to walk through this. I don't get a lot of dialogue on Van Til's apologetics, so I kind of live in my own world academically, so it's always fun to just have fellowship, talk through it.

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Well, that is super awesome, and before we went live, just for my audience,

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Jon was so nice to rub it in my face that he's got something really special behind him.

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What looks like these generic books and binders is actually something pretty cool.

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What do you got behind you there, Jon? So in 2008, I think it was 2013, I contacted David Bonson, Greg Bonson's son, about just if he had any books with just Bonson's notes in it, or anything

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I could use just to read more. And God was good, very good, and he sent me, basically, these are all the notes from recorded lectures he's done over the years.

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And then there's, of course, and then I went through the binders because there's a bunch of papers from like when he was at Westminster, so a lot of theological papers he wrote there.

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Papers on Wittgenstein that he did for FRAME and FRAME's class, for Van Til, and then

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USC, and there's other stuff as well. So it's like a thousand pages right here.

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Of Bonson's personal lecture notes that are unpublished? All unpublished. One of them is, it's like 65 pages, so Van Til asked him to do

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On the Nature of Proof. And this was just, I'm looking left because I have two screens, and your face is here, and my screen that I'm sharing is going to be here, so.

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No worries. When I'm looking down, I'm looking at you, but when I'm looking up,

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I'm looking, it looks like I'm looking at you, but I can't see you because I'm looking directly at the camera. So anyway, but yeah, there's a 65 -page -ish paper in there, and Van Til's comment is like, wow, this is way more than I expected.

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Like, please come to my office, you know. It's good. It's good stuff. So someday it'll be published.

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All right. Well, hopefully before I die, I'd love to read some of that stuff. That's the goal. All right.

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Well, why don't you tell folks very briefly about yourself? Who are you? What got you into presuppositionalism?

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And then we'll jump right into your presentation. I'm super excited to hear what you have to say. So why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself?

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Yeah, so I became a Christian in 2014 -ish, guide witness to by my football coach, a defensive coordinator, and got really into young earth creation.

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I still love it to this day. That was my first love intellectually. I was an evidentialist, not knowingly, just, you know, it's just what everyone did.

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And then in 2009, I got the book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation by Jason Lyle.

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And I remember reading about a year before that, reading Norman Geisler's summary of presuppositional apologetics in,

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I forget the book now. And I remember thinking before he got to the critique, thinking, this sounds great.

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And even looking back on it now, it's not a very good summary. But it was, it was just so revelational for me, even through his tainted view.

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Anyway, so my heart was ready for it. I just didn't have it yet. Sure. And then I read

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Lyle's book, and I'm very grateful for that book. It was helpful in a number of ways. But in the intro or the dedication, he mentions

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Bonson, right? Who is this guy? And so I actually got into Van Til through Bonson, which is probably pretty common for people now.

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But through Bonson, so the first book I read was Van Til's Apologetic. So I just dove right into the deep end.

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And then I figured out, then I found out there are other books. And then it just started this whole research that and then

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I started teaching apologetics at a classical Christian school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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Awesome. 2012, my family and I moved from Minnesota there. Now we're actually back, just moved back last year.

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Okay. Anyway, so I taught apologetics for a number of years there taught logic, formal logic there with systematic theology and philosophy and writing.

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And then, so right now, though, I'm a CFO at a rent to own company. And so I do a lot of numbers and efficiency and operations and that stuff.

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So a good opportunity came up in your black belt presupposition list, just in case the opportunity calls for it.

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It's an addiction. I can't get away from it. All right. Well, that's awesome. Well, I can definitely resonate with that.

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Yeah, I just simply love reading presuppositional. I mean, I like reading other books as well. I mean, I like to be well read.

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But there's just something about a good presuppositional book, you know, a Van Til or Bonson, or even a frame with some of the differences

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I might have. I just, it's just so insightful. And I appreciate what they have to say. But but let's jump right into this.

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You have a presentation you'd like to give. And I'm super excited to just give it over to you and just listen to you present your material.

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So are you ready to do that? Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. So I actually gave I gave a eight part

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Sunday school at my church on apologetic. And so I go through a kind of a history of Van Til and apologetics.

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And then I critique evidentialism. I critique also frame, and I think it might be lecture three, then

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I critique properly basic beliefs, and people, and from a particular book that's, that's teaching a, basically a planning a disciple.

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And it basically just to set up, I think it's helpful to set up in the back, because that's what we everyone is living and breathing.

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Sure. To critique that and then to contrast it then with what I think is the correct method.

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I would like to have you on at a separate time to talk about properly basic beliefs.

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I'd love to hear your critiques of those. I think that's an interesting topic. Yeah. Yeah. If you go to if you go to Christ Church, Twin Cities, their

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YouTube page, Christ Church, Twin Cities, you'll have they'll have the eight part apologetics talk.

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So what I'm doing here is I'm taking the part where I go through the proof. I just condensed it down, took out a lot of quotes, try to keep it within range.

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Sure. But yeah, then I also did a talk on Wittgenstein, and why he's a gift to Christian apologetics.

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That was that actually LBC of Mark Farnham's class a few weeks ago. Mark's cheering you on.

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He's saying go, John. Oh, great. Great. All right. So yeah, so that so this, that teachings there, and what's fascinated me from the start of this journey was the actual argument.

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So how what exactly is it? Like if you if you were to narrow down every term that's used and inference and lay it out for me on a table, and can

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I can I see everything like I don't want there to be any ambiguity? Where's the starting point? How do we get there?

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And I wasn't equipped to do that. But it but I wanted that. And so this this presentation is 10 years of basically leaving apologetics, getting into philosophy, discovering

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Wittgenstein, and what he said about language, which is essential to understand the foundation of Anto's apologetic, how to defend it.

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We'll talk about that here. And then also logic, logic was essential and how to craft the actual argument.

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So well, excellent. Well, let's jump right in. So your slides look nice. And yeah, two things

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I had I had drawn for me. So they don't exist in the world. That is awesome. That is awesome.

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Well, I'm going to give it over to you. You just unpack it and give us your presentation. And just every so often, I might interject with a question or a point of clarification, but go for it.

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The floor is yours. Yeah, sounds good. So I think it's important. It's important to, before we get into the argument to go through the literature briefly of Bonson and until what are the key components of the argument, because they never actually list them anywhere, where here are the all the things you need to hit to make this argument work.

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And so I think it's helpful to go through that list, and then to see if I make good on it. So is this Vantillion or not?

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Well, let's see what they said about the argument, and then go through the argument and then circle back and see if you know, everything was was met.

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So the first thing and this is going to be old hat for Oh, there we go.

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It's gonna be old hat for a lot of people, but that's, that's okay. The first one is starting with the

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Bible. So that's clearly communicated in Bonson Vantill all over the place. We don't come to scripture later on, it's it's our starting our authority from the beginning of our argument is the authority of Christ, obviously expressed in in scripture.

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So in the first place, I believe that Christian apologetics, in particular, reformed apologetics, is not really transcendental in its method, unless it says at the outset of its dialogue with non believers that the

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Christian position must be accepted on the authority of the self identifying Christ of scripture. Bonson, therefore, the authority of Christ and his word rather than intellectual autonomy must govern the starting point and method of his apologetics, as well as its conclusion.

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Likewise, the presumption of argument does not first debate the formal possibility of a book from God, but rather begins the argument from the outset with the actuality of the

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Bible. All right, so we all know that that's that's a pretty basic one component of this.

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The next one, which I don't think is talked about as much is that you can use truths that are in literature that are in length, like natural language, how that's supposed to work that are not necessarily stated explicitly in the

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Bible, but are consistent with the Bible. And that's really important to understand. Because you say we start with scripture, but do we have any other assumptions we can start with?

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Do they all have to be just what scripture teaches? And the answer is no. So let's let's see that this is

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Bantill. This does not imply that philosophy and science must be exclusively dependent upon theology for their basic principles.

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It implies only that philosophy and science must, as well as theology, turn to scripture for whatever light it has to offer.

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So it always has to be scripture as our standard. We can we can get truths from all over the place, but they're all they have to be consistent with scripture.

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Since we all make assumptions, this is key, but we alone do not make false assumptions. I find it a hang -up from some

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Bantillians that they don't want to concede that they start with assumptions. You have to start with assumptions.

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All arguments start with assumptions. You cannot get away from it. And Bantill admits this. We all make assumptions, but we alone do not make false ones.

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I like that. Worded well. The question is as to who makes the right assumptions? And Bonson, in terms of the analogy, the new, and he's actually a footnote,

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Bantill is talking about, I think it's Paul, and the architectural, we can use the building materials of unbelievers, but the plan of how to use those materials is, you know,

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So you're basically putting every data point within the context of a biblical worldview.

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Yeah, correct. So there could be some truth, and I think Wittgenstein did this. He found a wonderful truth in how language functions, and we'll get into some of that a little bit, but he didn't do it necessarily from a

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Christian perspective, but it is definitely true. This is how God made language to function, and Wittgenstein nails it in philosophical investigations.

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And so that's a tool that we should use then when we're doing apologetics, entirely consistent with Christianity.

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All right. And Wittgenstein might have been a Christian at the end of his life. We don't know. That's for another day.

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All right. He says that presupposition, yeah, so if argumentation is going to be possible, we need not just any presupposition, but we require clearly revealed and universally necessary ones, or you call them transcendentals.

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Presupposition is that Scripture declares God has provided all men. Only the

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Christian, depending upon the verbal revelation of God, can be assured that God has revealed certain unquestionable truths to all men in all ages.

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So it is not inconsistent with presuppositional apologetics to pick self -evident truths, but they are only self -evident, and they only work in God's world, okay, in the

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Christian interpretation of the world. That's a key difference here.

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So we're not trying to get some like autonomous view of reasoning where we intuitively pick out truths in the world, and somehow they hang by themselves, and then we go from there to God.

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We're not talking about that. But we don't throw out the truth just because we threw out the method, and that's key to latch on to.

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The third point is the argument is sufficient for rational certainty.

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It blows my mind that people call themselves Vantillians, but yet hold the probability apologetics.

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Vantill and Bonson could not be clearer that this argument is not probabilistic, and if your argument is, then it's not

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Vantillian. And I go into that in great detail with frame in my Sunday school.

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But the argument must be sufficient for, they would say, rational, or I would say epistemic certainty.

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That's key here. It's sufficient for certainty. It doesn't mean you're gonna have it, right? You can irrationally reject it.

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I can't force you to hold this. But the argument as it stands is sufficient for rational certainty if you want to accept it.

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All right, so, and they don't lay out those components, but here's how I would, well, let me just quick quote

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Vantill here. It is an insult to living God to say that his revelation of himself so lacks in clarity that man himself through and through a revelation of God does justice by it when he says that God probably exists.

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But the best and only possible proof for the existence of such a God is that his existence is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world.

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And then Bonson, Vantill aims for rational certainty while his critics settled for less, namely probability.

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All right, so, well, what makes an argument epistemically certain? Well, here's how I would use that term.

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So the first component would be an argument is epistemically certain if it's deductively valid.

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What that means is that if the premises are true, the conclusion has to be true. There's, there's no, it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.

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It is deductively valid. So here's an example. If the Bible is true, then

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Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The Bible is true, therefore Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

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Both premises are true, the conclusion has to follow from the premises. Now you can have an argument that's deductively valid that you want to reject.

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So if the Bible is false, then Jesus Christ is not the Son of God. The Bible is false, therefore

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Jesus Christ is not the Son of God. There is nothing illogical about this argument. Christians many times will say, well, that's just illogical.

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It's not illogical. I would say it's irrational, but it is not illogical. What makes it irrational is that it takes, it has a false premise.

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Premise two is obviously false, but this is logically true. This argument is a correct inference, formally.

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The strutting, you're talking about the structure of the argument. Yeah, the structure is true. This, if the premises are true, the conclusion has to be true.

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But of course the premises aren't true. Premise two is false. Does that make sense?

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Yeah. Okay, so we would call that then an unsound argument. It's valid, but unsound.

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Okay, but it's, but it's, but that, but validity though is an important component. It's not everything, but it is necessary if you're gonna have epistemic certainty.

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How you get to your conclusion has to be without error, or else it would be probability.

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It would be, I have a really good reason for getting to my conclusion, but I don't have one that's infallible.

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I could be wrong. Well, if you could be wrong, then you know, it's not rationally certain. It's not epistemically certain.

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Okay. All right, so the next component is that the falsehood, this is key, of any axiom leads to absurdity.

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So we start with these assumptions, and they have to be such that if you were to deny them, it pulls down the game, which is stronger than just saying, well, you can't deny them.

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It's that the, to even utter the falsehood of them, of it brings down the game we're playing.

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So in mathematics, if you were to deny one of the axioms of, let's say, standard set theory, or, or even starting points in calculus or other points like that, it would, it would pull down, like it would cause absurdity that they're, they're so obviously true.

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Now they don't prove them though, because they're assumptions. Okay. They're assumptions in the argument, but they're so obviously true that to deny them would destroy everything.

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So the, and we're going to get into that. How do you, how do you defend axioms when you can't prove them? So we'll get into that a little, a little later, but these axioms have to, you may call them indubitable.

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You get their different names and people get technical about this and say, well, just because you can't deny it doesn't mean that it's true.

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Can I ask a quick question real quick? Cause I know my audience, when they hear axiom, they think Clark and then they hear presupposition, they throw it out of your mind.

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Okay. So when you're using axiom here, could we equate just for understanding what you're saying there as kind of a, a

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Vantillian presupposition? A kind of an axiom needs to be broad. It's an axiom is an assumption in the argument.

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Okay. Okay. So that's all an axiom is. If you have an assumption and I'm going to make this distinction later, because there are assumptions that are outside of the argument.

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And a lot of confusion comes in when we start jumping from assumptions in the argument to assumptions outside of the argument.

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And we don't clarify that we're switching. What's cool. We're switching worlds here.

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We're going in and out of two worlds. So, yeah. So axiom is an assumption within in the argument.

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All right. Third would be the definitions, which all, all arguments have definitions, but not all.

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So all, all arguments have definitions, but not all terms in arguments are defined.

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So all arguments have undefined terms, which we can get into if we need to.

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So it's not wrong to have terms undefined. I find that funny when atheists try to pin Christians with, you know, undefined terms, it's inevitable.

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And I get into that in my Wittgenstein lecture. Anyway, so the, but definitions need to be not disputable.

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What do I mean by that? Well, you cannot define a term that would pull down the game that we're playing.

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So in mathematics, for example, the definition of number has been greatly clarified and made more precise over time, especially in the 19th century by Gottlob Frege and some other logicians, but especially

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Frege. And, and that's improved over the last, you know, 140 years. But the definitions, so, so they got better definitions than, than previously.

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Well, it's making what definite good definitions they do is they make the world that you're in clear.

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You can see things clearer and you can get to truth better. And many times it opens it up to you.

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So those are good. So you can have better definitions and worse definitions, like that's fine. But a disputable definition, and I'm, I guess

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I'm coining this, this use of this term, but this is the best way to put it. It pulls down the game.

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Like I could define certain terms in mathematics, such that you mathematics as we know it would be gone.

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Sure. And that's, that's not acceptable. Like you're not allowed to do that. So then natural language, you could define terms in such a way where they have no, they're not tethered to the common man, but that's what you're supposed to be arguing is in this world of how we commonly operate with language.

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Well, if you pick definitions that are foreign to this world that have no business operated in there, that would be a disputable definition.

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It would pull down our game. Anyway, so that's, but those are the three components that I would say need to be there when you are doing that argument.

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All right. Let me just interject just to let folks know we've got more people in. I'm speaking with John Kaus.

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He is leading us through a tiptoeing journey through a

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Van Til's transcendental argument. And he's doing it very well, I might add, with some pretty neat slides.

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I got to ask for some advice here. I loved, I love this, his presentation here. But before we continue,

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I do want to remind people that if you have any questions for John, he'll be taking questions at the back end of this episode.

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I don't want to interrupt him too much as he is giving us his presentation here. So if you have a question, preface your question with question, and we'll try our best to get to some of them at the end.

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Just real quick, I'm gonna minimize this real quick John, and just let people know once again, there are, there are only eight days left for people to sign up for the

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Epic Online Presup Conference, in which myself, Jason Lyle, Chris Bolt, Matt Slick, and Joshua Pillows will be giving presentations on various topics relating to presuppositionalism.

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So if you're looking to support Revealed Apologetics, it is greatly appreciated. You can do that by going to revealedapologetics .com,

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clicking on the PresupU drop down button and RSVPing, it would be greatly appreciated.

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And it's going to be excellent. So I'm very much looking forward to that. All right, John, you're doing an excellent job.

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You're speaking with clarity, your presentation is easy to follow. And I'm excited to hear more of what you have to say.

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So the floor is yours once more. Okay, so the fourth point would be axioms are knowable prior to acknowledging the conclusion.

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So these are things where we would start with assumptions, where if you brought them individually to an atheist, he'd have no problem accepting them.

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Sure. And so that's what we'll get into those. But just to show you that Bonson taught this, he said, it should be clear from the context here that Van Till meant to claim more than that the argument is valid, that is conclusion necessarily follows from the premises.

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In the first place, the strong kind of argument that he is advocating would also be sound, its premises would be true, we talked about this.

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He says, moreover, the truth of its premises, or the soundness of secondary, tertiary, etc, arguments for those premises is acknowledged or knowable without prior acknowledgement or statement of the conclusion.

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So you can know the premises are true, or you could believe them. And you wouldn't necessarily see that, oh,

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I have to accept the conclusion first, or with it, I shouldn't say first with it, I would have accepted with it.

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And he hasn't says this is a genuine cognitive advance with beginning, because things which the unbeliever will acknowledge turn out without him realizing it upon analysis, to require or apply the imply the truth of the

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Christian worldview. So that's what we're, we're going to do. Now, the last point is often talked about.

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So the middle three don't be aren't talked about a lot. First one is talked about. And then so is the last one.

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But the middle three don't seem to be talked about much, but you have to hit all of these. The fifth one is you may not assume the truth of the conclusion as an axiom.

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You cannot assume the truth of the conclusion. Sometimes people call them premises, I don't like calling premises, because if you give me two premises, and I say, well, why are they true?

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Or why should I believe them? And then if you give me additional arguments? Well, you just proved your premises.

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So they're not axioms that they're not assumptions. And many times you can't find what assumptions people are using, because you just don't have time to dig deep enough.

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And I think a lot of people when they present arguments don't actually know what their assumptions are. They they're they go unstated somewhere for someone else to try to try to find.

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So I don't like the term premise. I mean, I don't like the term is fine. But it could be a premise could be an assumption.

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You could have a premise that you in fact, I'm going to have one here in the argument will be one that I do not prove is assumed to be true.

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But you also think of premises that are proven, which we would call theorems. But anyway, so but you may not assume the truth of the conclusion as an axiom.

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You probably hear that saying as as a premise. All right, so in Benton is pretty clear on this.

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And this brings up the point of circular reasoning, the charge is constantly made that if matters stand, thus with Christianity, it has written its own death warrant, as far as intelligent men are concerned, who wishes to make such a simple blunder and elementary logic as to say that we believe something to be true because it is in the

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Bible. This is pretty straightforward. We are familiar with this, right? Why is the Bible true? Because it's true.

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We don't accept that as an argument, because you haven't gone anywhere, you're supposed to prove you're supposed to write all proofs of reasoning that are inferences, you're going from a starting point to another point to your goal.

30:15

Well, if you're already at your goal, then you don't have to go anywhere. Right. Okay, so it's not an argument, you are where you where you want to be.

30:22

So you're not doing it. But isn't that what the presupposition list is saying the Bible is true. Bible is true.

30:28

This is here from everybody. I think I have visually to state it where I'm not that this is gonna like remove these misunderstandings.

30:38

Right. But I found it the most helpful way to to present it is to and I'm gonna get into Richard Howe here at the end.

30:44

Okay. Dr. Howe and his ontology versus epistemology objection. And that's all a misunderstanding of the circularity problem.

30:53

Sure. Well, and I'll get into that a little later. Van Til actually coined this term spiral reasoning, spirally circular.

31:01

And I think it's it's the best I've seen. I've read a lot of transcendental literature. Sure. And people on it circular argumentation.

31:07

And I think it's I think it's the best term, I think we should use it. I think it should be just ubiquitous in anywhere.

31:14

Anyway, so he called it so it's not reasoning. Oh, let me just this first sentence.

31:20

He says our answer to this is briefly that we prefer to reason in a circle to not reasoning at all. So that's

31:27

Van Til's little jab, you know, people, he's not people will take that I see he's promoting vicious circular reasoning, or formal circular reasoning, as I would call it.

31:37

It's like, no, he's not. He's just being cute. Like, he's just, he's just poking. He's being fun. He caught he clearly distinguishes it and calls it spiral reasoning.

31:46

We must go around and around the thing to see more of its dimensions, and to know more about it in general, unless we are larger than that which we are investigating.

31:55

Unless we are larger than God, we cannot reason about him any other way than by a transcendental or circular argument.

32:01

The refusal to admit the necessity of circular reasoning is itself an evident token of opposition to Christianity.

32:09

Reasoning in a vicious circle is the only alternative to reasoning in a circle as discussed above.

32:15

This is really important. We're gonna get this later. Vicious circular reasoning, which is fallacious, is all the unbeliever has.

32:24

Christians, in contrast to that, have spiral circular reasoning, which makes, you know, all reasoning intelligible.

32:32

And we'll get it. We'll get into that. Can I? I'm gonna ask a quick question. You could just answer it super fast because I hear this all the time.

32:38

Oh, vicious circularity versus virtuous circularity. These are just made up terms that presuppositional issues so that they can just have an excuse for their circular reasoning.

32:48

I wanted to briefly address why that's bunk, and then you could move on because I think that I hit it at the end.

32:54

Okay. All right. It's all with Richard Howe and like I have all this. Okay. Circularity slide.

33:01

So I don't wanna I'm not gonna do a better better than when I'll do it there. So okay. Sounds good. Okay. So, yeah, we hold that our reasoning cannot fairly be called circular reasoning because we are not reasoning about this is key and seeking to explain facts by assuming the existence and meaning of certain other facts on the same level with those facts.

33:22

Okay, so this is his vantil's way of saying it's not viciously circular. Sure. Watson says, because there is more than one kind of circularity,

33:29

Vantil sometimes repudiated and sometimes tolerated the notion that his apologetic was circular, which has was undoubtedly which has undoubtedly been confusing to his readers and students.

33:40

And I agree. I think he could have been clearer on this. And I think Bonson at times could have been clear.

33:46

But you know, we'll get into that. The circularity of a transcendental argument is not at all the same as the fallacious circularity of an argument in which the conclusion is a restatement of one of its premises, or I would say it's axiom.

33:59

Rather, it is a circularity required in one reasons about a precondition of reasoning. Okay, is this the same thing?

34:07

All right. So the first two are sorry, one in five are commonly known with pre subtitutionalist.

34:13

The middle three are rarely are rarely mentioned. But the by far the hardest part in making good of this argument that I have found the first one is getting one in five to go together.

34:25

How do we start with the Bible, but we can't assume it's true in the argument. Because you can't assume the truth in the argument, because then that would be circular reason, how are you going to prove that Christianity is true, if one of the premises of the

34:39

Bible is the Word of God? Right. So john, you'd make a distinction between having the conclusion and the premise versus the presupposition of the argument.

34:50

So you have a presupposition that the Bible is true, but it's not one of the premises, lest your argument have a fallacious circular structure.

34:57

Correct, correct. We're going to drill into this later, in great detail. And presupposition, I like the term,

35:03

I think it's good, and we should keep using it, it can cause confusion. Because presuppositions are not the same with Christian, they don't behave the same, not just in content, they don't behave the same, rationally, with believers compared to unbelievers.

35:19

So, well, I'll get into that later. But one of the hardest things is, how can you possibly start with what the

35:27

Bible teaches, but you can't assume it's truth in the argument? It's extremely difficult to do.

35:36

The second thing that's really difficult is, once you do that, how do you defend your starting point? Because you can't prove it.

35:45

How do you start with assumptions and defend them? If an atheist just gives them up, well, what do you do?

35:52

Do you just walk away? We're not fideists, we can't just walk away. We didn't just arbitrarily pick these, we have good reasons for them, but yet we can't argue for them in the argument.

36:04

So how does that work? And we'll get into that. And that's where Wittgenstein is essential. So I actually go into this in great detail of my

36:11

Wittgenstein lecture, of how I'm convinced that if you do not understand philosophical investigations, and Wittgenstein's key teaching on language games, you cannot understand how to defend the foundation of Van Til's argument.

36:26

You will be powerless to do it. Okay. Okay, we'll get into that.

36:32

All right. So what is the argument? Here is the argument. Now, some of these you probably have not seen.

36:38

But I would say, I have a lot of it. I have a lot of quotes from Van Til and Bonson to show that they believed all these axioms, and that they would accept the theorems that are proven.

36:51

I took a lot of them out, I left some in, but I took a lot of them out just for sake of time. Okay, I'm just gonna walk into the argument now.

36:58

And I'll start defining my terms, and then just stop me if something is not understandable.

37:04

Sure. Alright, so we're gonna start now with our starting point, which would be our first set of assumptions, then we're gonna start making some inferences.

37:11

Alright, so the first assumption, let's call it A1, is the Bible plainly teaches, so that assertion sign there,

37:19

I just use that because it was convenient for, it's a logical term, but for our purposes, it just means plainly taught.

37:28

So the Bible plainly teaches that all people know with certainty that God created the world. So that's,

37:34

I'm not saying that it's true that all people know with certainty that God created the world.

37:39

I'm saying it's true that the Bible plainly teaches that. Right. So, and then

37:45

A1, I define it, so what is an axiom, what's an assumption within the argument? What is the

37:51

Bible? The Bible, I would define as a 66 books of the Protestant Scriptures, and then this

37:59

I would define as the Bible plainly teaches the proposition that comes after it. So plainly teaches that whatever comes after it has to be a proposition.

38:08

And then I define no as justified true belief. Now some of you who have read

38:13

Gettier and the literature on this would say, hey wait a minute, I thought we can't define knowledge as justified true belief.

38:19

That's false. There's nothing wrong with justified true belief. It's a wonderful definition of knowledge, and I actually refute that.

38:26

I refute Gettier, and all Gettier argument, all Gettier scenarios, which are meant to undermine justified true belief in my lecture.

38:34

So if you want to see that, I have it laid out. We go through it in great detail. So justified true belief is completely fine as a definition of knowledge.

38:42

I think we should use it. It's great. It was used for thousands of years. No problem. We should keep using that.

38:49

I'm gonna stop you for two seconds. I just want to address this comment here. Scott Terry says something, precept is a defensive tactic.

38:56

We shouldn't be swaggering out to try and prove God's existence. That couldn't be further from the truth.

39:02

If the transcendental argument is the centerpiece of a presuppositional method, it is an argument. So by definition, it tries to prove something.

39:10

So I think this is based on a misunderstanding, and Van Til definitely didn't see precept as merely a defensive tactic.

39:16

It's actually a bloodthirsty, go -for -the -jugger argument against unbelieving position, as well as validating the

39:24

Christian position of successful. So I just wanted to highlight there, as I'm kind of looking at the comments there.

39:29

But go ahead. Yeah, we'll go through a bunch of quotes where Van Til, he uses terms like proof. Yeah. So he's clearly using argumentative language.

39:38

I mean, argumentative in a negative sense, but just arguments. Okay, and so justified true belief, we define no.

39:48

To know with certainty is just justified true belief, such that the justification, or we could say evidence, cannot be an error.

39:56

So your justification is so strong that it cannot be an error. And if it can't be an error, then the knowledge can't be undermined.

40:04

You may irrationally give up that knowledge, but that doesn't mean that the knowledge wasn't certain.

40:10

You didn't have it at that time. And then we define

40:15

God as the ontological Trinity as revealed in the Bible. And then world is the space -time universe.

40:24

Okay, so here is the axiom. And how am

40:29

I supposed to defend this? I defend it by simply reading

40:34

Scripture. Okay, there's no, when you have a plain teaching of the Bible, so I'm claiming that the Bible, I'm assuming that the

40:42

Bible plainly teaches the truth that all people know with certainty that God created the world. I'm now going to show that by reading through the passages that teach that.

40:52

And John, just to clarify, and I know you said this before, but I'm sure it's important to reiterate it again. When you share the premise, the

40:58

Bible teaches that all people know with certainty that God created the world. You're not saying that it's true as like the premise right there.

41:06

You're saying that the Bible teaches that. We believe it's true, but that's not what you're stating in the premise itself.

41:12

So if you, can you see my cursor? Yeah, okay, so if you covered up everything here,

41:18

Bible and teaching here, and just took everything to the right, I'm not saying that that is true.

41:23

Of course, I believe that to be true, but I'm saying that it's, I am assuming that the

41:29

Bible plainly teaches that truth. So this is entirely about what the Bible teaches. All right, now, so let's,

41:40

Psalm 19, 1 through 4 is the most quoted passage on this topic in the Old Testament.

41:47

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

41:55

There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Okay, this is to everyone.

42:01

This is to everyone where language is used, where speech is used, where language is used. This is not like you have to get out, and you have to get like a telescope out, and you have to make certain inferences from the sky.

42:11

Like that's clearly an unnatural reading of this passage. The heavens, and I think the psalmist here,

42:19

David, is talking about, he's talking about the heavens because it's the most obvious thing that you would see.

42:25

Like if you're, what's the thing that is the most engrossing in our, in our, in the world for just majesty?

42:32

Well, it's the heavens, and so I think it's a great, but so what question would be, would this still be true if I raised someone in a cave?

42:40

Like would it still apply to that person if I raised him in a cave? Well, of course it would, right? Like that would be, that would not be a faithful reading of this passage to say, well, because it says heavens, and I just shield someone from the heavens, therefore, you know, he's, he doesn't get this.

42:55

It doesn't get through to him, and of course that would be, that would be false. Anyway, so verse four, their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

43:06

In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun. So it gets everywhere. This goes, God's glory goes everywhere in creation, and Paul makes this even stronger in Romans 1.

43:16

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.

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Other translations would say suppress the truth in unrighteousness, which is obviously correct. So reveal the truth, reveal from heaven, they have it, they have the truth, but they have it in unrighteousness, or they suppress it.

43:36

And this is everyone. Everyone has this. This is clearly picking off, picking, is commenting on, on Psalm, the

43:43

Psalm 19 that we just read. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shewed it unto them.

43:51

So what got, the knowledge of God is manifest in them, not because they're so great, but because God gave it to them.

43:57

It's part of being made in his image. So you have it revealed from heaven down to people, and it's revealed in the very nature of who they are.

44:05

And then verse 20 is even broader than just heaven. It says, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.

44:14

The whole world is revelatory of God, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power in Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

44:23

Everyone knows this, and it helps everyone under judgment. I'll finish the passage.

44:31

Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. So they knew God. Everyone knows

44:37

God, but then they suppress it. They glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

44:45

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four -footed beasts, and creeping things.

44:55

So they take the knowledge of God, and then they corrupt it, and they worship something with their hands, something that man creates.

45:02

That's what they worship. Become pagans. Wherefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves.

45:12

This now gets into God giving people up through this, through their sin. Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the

45:20

Creator, who's blessed forever. Amen. So what I would say, if someone didn't believe this,

45:26

I would say, well just read these passages. Like this is plain. Just like if someone said,

45:31

I don't believe that Jesus, does the Bible teach that Jesus is the Son of God? I would say, yeah, look.

45:38

And I would just show them the passages. And that's different than saying that it's true that Jesus is the

45:44

Son of God. You're arguing that it's true that the Bible teaches that Jesus is the Son of God.

45:49

It's true that the Bible teaches that all men know with certainty that God created the world. Yes. It's plainly taught.

45:56

And plain teachings are distinct from, not everything is plain in the Bible. Right. So some things

46:02

God hides from us. Now some things we're gonna discover are plain that we didn't know were plain before.

46:09

But that's happened in church history. Now we didn't make them plain because we discovered it to be plain.

46:14

They were already plain prior to us doing that. But the best way to actually defend this is to just show it.

46:22

To show it to people. If they deny it at that point, it's really, we're not in exegesis anymore.

46:29

We're into how language functions. So we need to take courses in how language works.

46:34

Like clearly there's a key breakdown in how language is supposed to function. And I need to explain the game to this person.

46:42

Like this is how we play with language. Like this is how it works. You know, what do you not understand about that?

46:49

Sure. All right. So someone says, well I just won't accept this. And I say, well fine.

46:56

You don't have to accept anything. You know, I'm not gonna chase you around. Many times we feel like it's our obligation to get someone to accept what we're doing.

47:06

It's not our obligation. We're supposed to defend the truth of God's Word and present good arguments.

47:12

If someone is just irrationally unwilling to accept stuff, well then wish them good day or change the subject and buy them pizza and hang out.

47:19

But don't reason anymore. They've given up the game of reasoning. They've given it up. Now someone could say, well

47:26

I deny that it's plain. I would say, okay, you're welcome to explain to me then how language functions and how we can interpret the

47:35

Bible consistently in denying that the Bible is teaching what

47:40

I just read as being plain. So you'd have to show me how this game is supposed to work.

47:46

Because I wouldn't understand how to read Scripture if I could not interpret Psalm 19 and Romans 1 in this way.

47:53

In fact, the only people I find that try to do this are evidentialists who don't like, they don't like the immediacy of this knowledge, right?

48:00

We look up in the heavens and it's beautiful. You don't have to think about it. It's immediate. You see a sunrise and a sunset.

48:06

It's beautiful. Flowers in bloom, babies born, like all these things are immediately obvious as being beautiful.

48:14

Wonderful things from God. Now they're mediated through creation, of course, okay?

48:20

But I don't have to mediate through it. It's immediate to me. It's mediated through things, of course, because that's the point of creation is to make

48:28

God's nature known to man. I guess you could say to angels as well.

48:36

But the, does that make sense? So it's immediate though to us. Anyway, this must, this must be, so then if someone says, well,

48:48

I'm just gonna give up. I'm not gonna give up. I'm not just, I'm not gonna accept it. I like Bonson's quote here.

48:54

He says, this must be his method because the Word of God in the Bible has a unique epistemological status for the

48:59

Christian. It requires no corroboration and carries its own evidence inherently or self -attestingly.

49:05

So if the Bible self -attests to its truth, self -attesting to its truth, it's plain and it carries its own authority.

49:14

If you're just unwilling to interact with that, there's nothing else I can do, okay? I just,

49:19

I need to, we need, we need to move. Right. You're not doing apologetics at that point if the person is just not going to interact with, yeah.

49:25

And the thing that's missed about this is that this teaching, the self -attestation of Scripture, has perfect correlation with Wittgenstein's work and language games.

49:37

And Van Til's analogical knowledge, which is wonderful and how he develops that, is also a wonderful complement to Wittgenstein.

49:46

So Wittgenstein's language games is all about this. It's entirely about this. Anyway, I digress.

49:53

All right. So next, next time someone says, well, the church fathers are silent on this. So it's not plain because they haven't decided it to be plain.

50:03

Well, that's just a confusion about what plain means. So the church fathers have never decided what is plain in the sense of that they make it plain.

50:12

They, they will come together and affirm collectively that this is our interpretation and the church collectively says, you know, this is a plain teaching.

50:21

And then it would be, and they're almost always without error there.

50:26

I think if we look back in church history, it's very rare to have Christians unite over centuries in affirming something to be a teaching.

50:36

And I would say like the historicity of Adam and Eve, that was a basic, and it was so obvious, like they never stated it, you know, previously.

50:42

But we should now in this. But the church fathers recognize a plain teaching.

50:49

They don't, they don't make it plain. They're not creating it to be, to be plain. Sure. It is or it isn't.

50:56

And then we, we discover. So the fact that they would be silent on this, and I'm not even sure they are,

51:01

I'm just making this as an objection, is really irrelevant. All right. So let's go to the next, the next axiom.

51:08

And this will go a little faster now. Sure. So the Bible, now here we go. The Bible plainly teaches that people who know with certainty that God created the world, know with certainty that the world is orderly.

51:19

So if you know, if you know with certainty that God created the world, then you know that the world that he made is orderly.

51:28

Okay. That, that Bible plainly teaches that. That's our assumption. That's our axiom. The Bible plainly teaches that.

51:37

And what does it mean for the world to be orderly? The world is predictable through the use of human sensation. All right.

51:44

Van Til talks about this. He says, still further, men ought to reason that the disorder that is found in nature is unnatural.

51:51

This is actually, I think there's an argument here against old earth creation, which I won't go into. I'll create it someday.

51:57

That actually the disorder that we see could not have been originally created by God.

52:04

Anyway, that's another time. He says the disorder of nature cannot be part of the originally constituted state of affairs with respect to nature.

52:11

The God of order would create an orderly universe if he created one at all. To create a disorderly universe would be to deny himself as a

52:19

God of order. So, uh, this is not, this is, and this is obviously taught all throughout scripture.

52:26

If, if, if the world were truly, if God, if God can make the world disordered and put man in it and expect him to, to obey him, um, it would be immoral because to obey

52:39

God's law, you have to have an ordered world. And that's, that's implied implicitly taught all throughout scripture.

52:48

Like you would, it would be unintelligible. The Bible would be unintelligible. Uh, if axiom two were not, if it were not true that the

52:55

Bible plainly teaches that, uh, that, yeah. All right.

53:01

Now someone say, well, the Bible has changed. Muslims do this all the time. The Bible's changed over time.

53:07

Okay. You can claim that. Do you have any evidence for that? This, this used to be, I guess it's still popular in some, in some circles.

53:15

Um, there is so much ad manuscript evidence and historical evidence that the Bible is unchanged over time, that it's just laughable to claim this.

53:24

Like there is no evidence whatsoever that the Bible has textual variants, bro. The textual variants, there are more textual variants in the new

53:32

Testament than there are words. We've heard it before. Yes. Yeah. And you, you know, you overlap all of And I think

53:38

Geisler's book is still a great one on this. And, uh, I forget what it's called anyway.

53:44

It's on, it's on, on this subject. Uh, but you know, 98 .6 % of the

53:50

Bible is undis, like the, the man of the Bible, uh, take all the pure. Yeah.

53:55

It's, it's pure. We may differ on exactly how we want to use the language to express it. So we can do certain emphasize certain things a certain way.

54:04

And like the NIV compared to the King James. Uh, but there's no dispute. Oh, what's this supposed to mean? The other one and a half percent, roughly that's in dispute affects no plain doctrine.

54:15

So it's not, this is dead. Like this is over. You need, people need to stop saying this. The Bible has, and uh, you, you clearly that have no evidence that it had, like, this is just a completely arbitrary objection that people are throwing out to try to stall

54:30

Christians. And we really just need to move on from it. It's like, I'm sorry, this has been answered.

54:36

This is, I could, there's nothing else that could come out that would further cooperate what we've already known to be true.

54:42

Like the evidence is so overwhelming. Like what else would you need? All right.

54:49

So the next axiom, the Bible plainly teaches that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. I have in my longer presentation,

54:57

I go through scriptural passages, walking the person through this. I'm not going to do that here. Uh, I it's hard to find people who really take serious that the

55:04

Bible doesn't teach its own inerrancy. I know some, there are some that do that, uh, heretics and, but again, my response to them would be the same

55:13

Wittgensteinian response I gave, I gave earlier. The Bible obviously teaches its own inerrancy and I, and to see that walk through, just watch the

55:21

Sunday school. Okay. All right. Now the next one is probably the most interesting axiom.

55:27

This is the one that I think is the most fun and it looks controversial, but I don't think it is. I think we just need to use it more.

55:35

And that is this. Oh, I'm sorry. Inerrant word of God is collection of God's teachings that teach no error.

55:42

Now it could be sounds like, well, are there collections of God's teachings? Um, is there stuff that's not in here?

55:49

Right. That, well, sure. I mean, there probably are books or letters that Paul wrote,

55:56

Peter wrote that we don't have anymore. Well, that's definitely true. Yeah. And, and that are inerrant.

56:03

We just don't have them anymore. So, uh, this doesn't necessarily be, the Bible doesn't have to be all of God's teachings throughout history.

56:10

Right. But, but that's what we got. And that collection is, is without error. All right.

56:15

So here's the fourth one. I love this axiom. I love all of them, but this one is especially great.

56:21

No one can demonstrate that the Bible teaches, uh, plainly teaches a falsehood.

56:27

Enter triggered atheists who make videos about how the Bible is self -contradictory and completely false.

56:34

Okay. So notice now we're shifting here. We're shifting to now a truth about, uh, our interaction with the

56:40

Bible. Okay. So the first three were about the Bible's plain teaching. So we started with scripture. The fourth one is now what man can do with it.

56:49

And I, this is the negative. I'm saying that no one can demonstrate that the Bible teaches a falsehood. I'm assuming that I'm not proving that now notice every

56:58

Christian apologist assumes this. Of course you assume this or else you wouldn't be an apologist.

57:04

If you didn't assume this, you actually thought that an unbeliever could demonstrate that the

57:10

Bible teaches the falsehood. Well then what are you doing? You clearly wouldn't have assurance of your salvation because that's supposed to be epistemically certain, unquestionable.

57:19

Like you could give it up irrationally, but once you have it, it's bulletproof. You're a child of God.

57:26

You're going to heaven. You're redeemed in Christ. God loves you. He will not let you go. You're his sheep. You hear his voice and you follow him.

57:33

You don't follow the voice of strangers. You follow, you follow Christ. Okay. So if you have that, then obviously the

57:39

Bible can't teach a falsehood because it's the word of God. And so no one can demonstrate that the

57:45

Bible teaches a falsehood. So I know this to be true, but I can't prove it in the argument, but I don't need to.

57:54

I'll just assume it's true. And you say, well, I'm going to knock it down. Be my guest. Take your shot and you'll fail.

58:04

And I know you'll fail, but that doesn't mean I'm going to prove it here in the argument. Now someone says, so what do

58:11

I mean by demonstrate? And then I'm going to be too technical here, but some kind of deduction. Okay.

58:16

Not this. Well, you know, like in Genesis two, it teaches that trees came after, uh, trees came after man, but in, uh, in Genesis, or I guess it'd be birds or not be, uh, land animals, you know, came after man or the field.

58:36

But then in Genesis one, they came before man, they were, they were first made. And then man, you know, man was made.

58:43

It's like, okay, that's, that's not, that's not a demonstration that the Bible teaches a falsehood.

58:48

That is, these are two teachings that you don't understand. That's very different.

58:54

Many times what people will do is they'll say like Dan Barker does this all the time. He'll, he'll quote a passage in John where it says that they didn't hear.

59:02

I forgot. I used to have this memorized, but I actually debated him in 2000. I don't know what it was, nine or 10.

59:10

Um, maybe we'll do it again someday. I was a young buck back then. Anyway. Uh, and he'll quote, or it says, you know, uh, they didn't hear what, what happened.

59:20

And then it says they heard, like they didn't hear what was spoken. And then it says they heard to see a contradiction.

59:26

No, you have to actually come through it. Like, so to demonstrate this, have any

59:31

Bible commentators address that problem, that problem? Well, if they have, then you need to interact with it.

59:40

And that's what every atheist objection I have seen has been answered decades ago.

59:46

They're just not researching it. Well, okay. So that's, that's not, that's not a demonstration.

59:52

That's not a good deduction. Okay. And then in that passage, by the way, it was, they heard noise.

59:59

Some heard thunder, some heard something else. They didn't hear it intelligibly. Is this

01:00:05

Paul's conversion you're talking about? I don't think so. I think it was the gospel of John. Yeah.

01:00:10

I think it's in the gospel of John. Uh, I used, yeah, I I'll find it.

01:00:16

And then if people want to know what it is, I can, I can find it. Okay. So I'm saying that you cannot, you cannot deduce that the

01:00:23

Bible plainly teaches a falsehood. Now it's important. It's plainly teaches like it does obviously teaches a false.

01:00:29

So there's no way around it. Now someone says, well, it's not irrefutable. Okay. Show me.

01:00:37

Well, I can't, I can't do that right now. Okay. Well then that's irrelevant. You're just now, now you're telling me that you just irrationally won't suck.

01:00:44

Won't accept this axiom, which by the way, I don't know why you don't want, like, if you have no objection, if you're truly going to be a rational person with atheists are supposed to be, you know, the champions of rationality, rationality, if you have no objection that hasn't already been answered to the truth of the

01:01:03

Bible, what, why do you have a problem with, with this axiom? It's not saying that the

01:01:09

Bible is the word of God. It's just saying that you can't show that it teaches a falsehood. That's it.

01:01:16

And if you have no good example that it does, what do you care? Like, I don't understand.

01:01:21

It's such, it's such a, well, some people think they have good reasons to, to show that it teaches a falsehood. So they'll give their attempts to show that the

01:01:29

Bible is, you know, contrary to what we know of science and, you know, Every time

01:01:35

Eli, you answer them, what do they do? Do they say, Oh, now I accept your assumption.

01:01:40

No, they don't accept your explanation. Or if they accept your explanation, they'll move on to something else they think is contradicting.

01:01:46

Correct. Yeah. So they're not really wanting to, they're just, and that, and that show you, they're being an irrational.

01:01:52

It's not okay. Just to not accept someone. If I present an argument, someone presents a counterpoint and I just ignore it.

01:01:58

That's irrational, right? That's, that's not playing the argument game. All right. So now someone says, well,

01:02:03

Hey, it could be demonstrated in the future. A demonstration could exist. We just don't have it yet.

01:02:09

And I would say, well, that's irrelevant to this because it's an appeal to ignorance. Like that's completely arbitrary.

01:02:16

You, you are, you, you are making that, that, uh, that assertion based on no evidence whatsoever that it's true.

01:02:24

So that's completely irrelevant. You can just move on from that. Why don't you go get me it and then bring it back and we'll talk about it.

01:02:30

Okay. But until then you have no objection to this, this axiom. Well, what if someone says, well, wait a minute, if you're trying to prove, and you're used like the transcendental argument to show the epistemic certainty with which we could know that that Christianity is true, then

01:02:45

I don't need to know. Uh, it, all it needs to do, it seems to me that all that I would need to do is show that it's possible, logically possible that there could be an argument in the future that can be a counterpoint.

01:02:59

So if it's logically possible, is, doesn't that go some way for the unbeliever to show that the transcendent

01:03:06

I'm sorry. You can't make good on that. Okay.

01:03:13

I don't think so either. I'm just saying, so, so bring it on. I would love to see that argument.

01:03:19

Okay. All right. Next one.

01:03:25

What if they stumped me in the moment, like a drive by objection, right? Like atheists are great.

01:03:30

They have, they, they're these YouTube or not YouTube, these, uh, pages where you have like 300 Bible objections, you know, objections to Christianity and they grabbed 15 and they, they run by and they, they throw them all at you.

01:03:42

And if you didn't answer all of them, or you like you missed one and it was like, ah, I see the whole thing is just bunk.

01:03:48

And you should just move on. Well, this is not axiom four is not true.

01:03:53

So long as I can in the moment refute every single one that you possibly can bring up. So, and that's, that's, that is irrational.

01:04:01

That's not how we play this game of reasoning. Um, so stumping me in the moment is that, so this were to happen in a formal debate, let's say a debate was happening and I was presenting this proof and it would be completely legitimate for someone to actually try to demonstrate, for example, an inconsistency in our definitions, uh, say of God's attributes, that would be completely consistent.

01:04:23

That would be completely acceptable. Now to do that, you would have to respond to objections that are to answers, uh, to this objection that have already been written.

01:04:33

Like you have to at least be somewhat scholarly and go through this. And if you found some demonstration, which is impossible, but if you found some demonstration that where no one could refute it, then present it.

01:04:47

And I would be refuted and the whole thing would be over. And so would all of apologetics, by the way, like we act like this would be unique to my argument or my version of Antos argument.

01:04:55

It's of every Christian argument, everyone's subject to this, you know, possibility.

01:05:02

I don't think it is a possibility, but anyway, so this is not unique to maintaining apologetics, that act, that assumption.

01:05:11

All right. And someone says, well, Muslims can use similar axioms. I would say they cannot. So the first three that the, that the say, say we took the

01:05:19

Bible out and put Quran there. Well, many Muslims would say that the, that the

01:05:25

Quran plainly teaches that Allah is totally other. In fact, in their lives,

01:05:30

I know some scholars would dispute that and say, well, it's not required in reading the Quran to read it that way. You know, there's, there are acceptable ways to read it where you don't have to believe or interpret to infer that Allah is totally other, but in their lives, like the actual natural function of Muslims is that God is totally other, like it's ingrained in their practices, how they live life and how they speak of Allah and the impersonal nature of Allah to them.

01:06:02

So I think, I think that's, I don't think that's defensible given, given how Muslims clearly understand this book.

01:06:09

So I don't, so if that's true, well, then you can't say that, that the Bible, so for example, three, the

01:06:19

Quran plainly teaches that the Quran is the near word of God. Well, that only works if, if the

01:06:25

Quran is coming from Allah who's consistent and he could be lying, you know, in those things.

01:06:32

So like our definitions here, if we took out God created the world and put Allah created the world, it would, it would mess up one through three.

01:06:40

Okay. Now, so then you get to what about, let's just say

01:06:46

I granted that point though. You can still make good on, like, let's say someone said, no, I think we can refute you on that for one through three.

01:06:54

Well, four, you can clearly demonstrate on top of that because the Quran clearly affirms parts of the

01:07:01

Bible, whole books, and you can just show that an inconsistency between the

01:07:06

Quran and the Bible. Batson did this in his debate with a

01:07:11

Jew and a Muslim. And you say, well, and I know there's all these debates and we're

01:07:17

Muslims. Let's talk about the Bible has changed over time. That's, that's their reputation of that. But I would say that's not acceptable argument.

01:07:24

Like you, it is not intellectually defensible at all to say the

01:07:29

Bible has changed over time. You can claim that you can say that you hold that irrationally because you need it to be that way intellectually, but that's not, that's not how we're supposed to reason here.

01:07:41

So if you're going to be consistent, you're going to be a rational person. You cannot say the Bible changed over time, or you can say that, but you can't do it with evidence.

01:07:51

And so we can demonstrate an inconsistency, which is inconsistency between the

01:07:57

Bible and the Quran. And so then the Quran would teach a falsehood. Okay. All right. So I don't think

01:08:03

Muslims can, can use these four axioms. And I say, well, Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses. Well, you just refute them from the

01:08:09

Bible. Even the Jehovah's witnesses corrupted watchtower translation.

01:08:14

I just go to revelation chapter one and the alpha and the omega dies.

01:08:21

And he, and he comes back. Like, how is that possible? Like there are so many ways you can refute Jehovah's witnesses, even from when within their own text.

01:08:29

So I, so, so we just reason with them from, from scripture or their perverted version of the

01:08:35

Bible. Okay. All right. Now, so these four are true.

01:08:40

We assume them to be true. What can we infer from this? Now we're going to get into the more familiar territory for Vantillians.

01:08:48

So that now what we're inferring then is that Christianity is a sufficient foundation for knowledge. It's a sufficient foundation for knowledge that the, if the

01:08:58

Bible plainly teaches that all people know a certainty that God created the world. And from that, the Bible teaches that people that know the world is orderly with certainty.

01:09:06

No, the world is orderly. And the Bible teaches that this, this book is from God. It's an errant and errant word of God.

01:09:14

And you can't refute it or you can't, yeah, you can't show that it teaches a falsehood.

01:09:19

Then it's a sufficient foundation for knowledge. That doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't mean it's the only sufficient foundation for knowledge, but it is a sufficient foundation for knowledge.

01:09:28

Now, what do I mean by Christianity? It's a worldview derived from the Bible's plain teachings.

01:09:35

This is actually a point of, of contention where people will say, well, see

01:09:41

Vantill wanted to prove the existence of God, not really the truth of Christianity. And he emphasized the ontological

01:09:48

Trinity. And that's like, that's what he was trying to prove, not just Christianity as a worldview.

01:09:54

And there were, and there was these, I don't want to call them petty, but I think they are trying to like a pure, more purist proof is to emphasize the ontological

01:10:06

Trinity in the argument. I'm not talking about Vantill's theology, which obviously his contribution to ontological

01:10:12

Trinity, that doctrine was, was great. But in the argument, Vantill all the time goes from saying, we need to prove the truth of the

01:10:23

Bible. We need to prove the truth of Christianity, and we need to prove that God exists. He uses all three interchangeably from the start of his career to the end of his career, all interchangeably.

01:10:35

So I think we should, and the most natural one is, and so, and obviously if you're going to prove that God exists, you would also prove the truth that would come with that.

01:10:44

Like, it's not just on its own. Anyway, so Vantill was a worldview apologist. He was, he was proving the main doctrines of Christianity.

01:10:53

So can be correctly interpreted, except it be seen in the light of the main doctrines of Christianity.

01:11:00

Thus, there's absolutely certain proof. This is to that objection that you brought up. He says, there is certain proof for the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism.

01:11:10

Again, these are the same thing in his mind. It is but to say that Christianity alone is rational.

01:11:17

Again, Christianity alone is rational. This would be the first premise, typically, if you looked at the, this would be the transcendental premise.

01:11:24

It is but to say that if one leaves the foundation of the presupposition of the truth of the Christian religion, one falls into the quagmire of the utterly irrational.

01:11:32

No intelligent predication is possible except on the basis of the truth that is the absolute truth of Christianity.

01:11:40

We're defending the truth of Christianity, which of course included in that is that God exists. Christian apologetics must accordingly in practice be a vindication of the

01:11:50

Christian world and life view as a whole. And Bonson, of course, talks about this all the time.

01:11:57

The first step, he says, is a positive presentation of the Christian worldview, showing that it does make, it does make sense out of science and logic and moral values.

01:12:04

That's actually what we just did. So we just did that positive presentation. That's what the, that was the inference that we made.

01:12:11

But some people try to contrast Bonson and Van Til and say, see, Bonson wants to emphasize too much worldview. Van Til wanted to emphasize the ontological trinity, and it's just false.

01:12:20

Like Van Til emphasized worldview and Christianity just as much as Bonson. It may be more.

01:12:27

All right. And then what do I mean by sufficient foundation for knowledge? This has been disputed. I just mean it, the worldview adequately describes the world in such a way that a person just has to be one person to be everyone, but a person knows the world to be orderly.

01:12:47

You have to know the world to be orderly to have knowledge of anything in it. And that's just a basic part of how we view the world.

01:12:55

Like that's a basic assumption of how we interact with the world. So to be a sufficient foundation for knowledge, you have to have an interpretation of the world.

01:13:03

I like putting it this way. You need to have a worldview where your interpretation of the world gives knowledge a home.

01:13:12

Knowledge has to have a home in your interpretation of the world. And we've demonstrated that Christianity is one of those homes.

01:13:22

Now, this brings up the direct acquaintance objection, and you have videos on this, so I don't want to belabor this too much.

01:13:28

But people will say, well, no, you know, this only comes from philosophers, certain analytic philosophers of the last hundred years, which should tell you something.

01:13:37

Philosophers are the kings at creating private language games that have no relation to our world.

01:13:46

Like there's these artificial worlds that they create and that they interact with, and then they irrationally think that you're supposed to abide by their rules.

01:13:54

It's like, well, we're not playing that game. Like you're welcome to play it, but we're not playing that over here. And so what they'll say though here, and I think they're doing that in this objection, they'll say, well, you know, we just have these beliefs that are, that are, we're directly acquainted with them.

01:14:07

It's intuitively obvious. It's immediate. Like this is my hand or I'm in pain. And there's always other sorts of things.

01:14:14

Beliefs that I have right there that are immediate as if they hang in, in, in the ether, they hang, they hang by themselves.

01:14:23

And that's not how we function. Go, go walk around and just interact with people. No one actually functions that way.

01:14:30

You don't just function with a couple of beliefs that are all direct acquaintances and then build from there. There, we have a cluster of beliefs and philosophers have affirmed this.

01:14:39

Wittgenstein affirmed this. He said, when we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition.

01:14:45

It is a whole system of propositions. Light dawns gradually over the whole. What I hold fast to is not one proposition, but a nest of propositions.

01:14:57

There is no such thing as an isolated proposition. For what I call a proposition is a position in the game of language.

01:15:05

So I'll leave that there with how language functions, but language cannot function. It does not function in such a way where you can just pick out a couple of propositions and use them.

01:15:14

That only has meaning and function in an entire game in which you're operating. So if someone brought up that objection,

01:15:21

I'd say, I'm sorry, the world does not work that way. I can take you around and show you how the world works, but I really can't do anything other than that.

01:15:28

And if someone says, well, I don't accept that, say, well, fine. I can't do anything for you. Like you're playing a different game that doesn't have any relevance to the game that we are all playing when we reason.

01:15:42

All right. So to give this a little picture here, and we'll go through this.

01:15:47

So the first four axioms then lead to our first theorem. We're going to build then from this.

01:15:54

We're going to use that theorem to then prove other theorems with other axioms to then get to our final theorem, which is that Christianity is true.

01:16:02

Okay. Just real quick. So how much longer to unpack the argument? So this will go much faster now.

01:16:08

Okay. Yeah. I just don't want to go too long because then other than the people watching it, I'm not sure if anyone's going to watch if it goes to like two hours or something like that.

01:16:16

I can listen to it forever, but if you could streamline it a little bit and then kind of walk us through, that'd be great.

01:16:24

You're doing an excellent job. And I, again, I said it before, your slides are awesome. They're very easy.

01:16:30

I'm just going to skip the objections then. Okay. All right. We'll go through the objections. We'll just kind of, okay.

01:16:35

And I, and I, we can, I can have you on again. We can talk more about those objections. I thought, I think you're doing an excellent job. Oh, sure.

01:16:41

That's that's fine. Sure. Okay. So the next axiom is that the Bible plainly teaches that all anti -Christian worldviews are insufficient foundations for knowledge.

01:16:51

So the Bible would teach plainly that there is no contrary Christian worldview that can actually give knowledge a home.

01:17:00

And then the Bible talks about the folly of unbelief consistently. So anti -Christian worldview is a worldview that contradicts

01:17:07

Christianity. What is a worldview? A worldview is a philosophy of life. Van Tilght used that language all the time in his literature.

01:17:15

Right. And then I go through a bunch of passages where the Bible talks about the folly of unbelief, I think is plain.

01:17:21

All right. Now from there though, we get our second theorem, which is, so if the Bible plainly teaches that now, if one can demonstrate that an anti -Christian worldview is a sufficient foundation for knowledge.

01:17:32

So if you could give me some anti -Christian worldview that is a sufficient foundation for knowledge, then you have demonstrated that the

01:17:38

Bible teaches a falsehood, plainly teaches a falsehood given axiom five, which I would say is true.

01:17:45

Right. Does that make sense? Yes. So we can infer that theorem from that axiom.

01:17:51

So in other words, if you could show that a non -Christian worldview provides a sufficient foundation for knowledge, you falsified the biblical teaching that it's the only one that can do that.

01:17:59

Correct. Right. All right. So then from that axiom, we get theorem two.

01:18:05

All right. Now then, so theorem two, we're going to use it, that's now in an argument. So notice, this is my favorite, one of my favorite inferences of this.

01:18:14

So given that truth, well, we already assume that no one can demonstrate the

01:18:20

Bible teaches a falsehood. So through modus tollens, we can infer that no one can demonstrate that an anti -Christian worldview is a sufficient foundation for knowledge.

01:18:32

And so then we infer no one can demonstrate that an anti -Christian worldview is a sufficient foundation for knowledge. So let me just walk through that.

01:18:40

If one can demonstrate that an anti -Christian worldview is a sufficient foundation for knowledge, then one can demonstrate that the

01:18:45

Bible teaches a falsehood. But hey guys, we already assume that you can't. So through basic modus tollens, because the axiom four is the negation of the consequent of the conditional in theorem two you can then negate the antecedent which makes it go from a particular to a universal so it's no one can demonstrate that an anti -christian worldview is a sufficient foundation for knowledge so they ah that axiom four it keeps popping up yeah it's important it's like but this follows logically all right now someone says well i'm a modern day prophet and well i have a response to that basically i i tell them hey i'll buy you pizza and beer and you come write your revelation for me don't bring a bible because obviously you can't do that you're a prophet so come and hang out with me i want to see this perfect revelation that you have and this is this really an absurd objection mostly christians just use this right all right so then from axiom four and theorem two we get theorem three all right now we're going to get to axiom six so if christianity is a sufficient foundation for knowledge and no one can demonstrate that an anti -christian worldview is a sufficient foundation for knowledge then christianity is the only sufficient foundation for knowledge so if christianity is sufficient and you can't show me that any any non -christian one is then it's the only one and then the question would be why so is it possible for the left side the antecedent to be true and the consequent to be false is that possible no then it's true okay all right i got you it's a conditional so conditionals are only false well not all conditionals but uh condition how are we using it here conditional is definitely false if the left side is true and the consequent is okay can't get a falsehood from a truth okay i got you so is it possible for the left side to be true and the right side to be false no so if the left side is true the right side has to be true okay and we can get into the logical structure of this condition a lot we're not going to do that now but i could do that all right now someone says well this could be false i say again just like the other one well show me give me an example if you don't it's arbitrary right uh and bonson love this says if you abandon rationality then you have you've stepped outside the circular the circle of apologetical concern right you're not you're not playing the game anymore so rationality is not acceptable all right but now notice this though with that conditional we've proven that christianity is a sufficient foundation for knowledge and we have proven that no one can demonstrate that an anti -christian worldview is a sufficient foundation for knowledge and throws so through modus ponens christianity is the only sufficient foundation for knowledge so from the sufficiency of christianity we've proven its necessity in relation to knowledge so that's a commonly expressed thing of well can't we infer the necessity of christianity for knowledge from its sufficiency yes but how do you do that this is how you do it so this we've now just made good on that we've now shown that christianity is necessary for knowledge right so now with axiom six and then theorems one and three we get theorem four all right so now theorem four is christianity is the only sufficient foundation for knowledge it's the only home for knowledge well by next axiom is well there is knowledge okay there is someone who has knowledge which i think is is uh one of those axioms where if you deny it you pull down the language that we're doing like you pull down the game that we're playing michael butler doesn't think that's acceptable i would disagree with him i think i think it is and van till would teach us that way or uh wittgenstein would teach us that way so there is knowledge christianity only sufficient foundation for knowledge there is knowledge well then christianity is true and this is oh sorry let me go to van till clearly taught this that we we cannot ask how we know without the same time asking what we know oh no that's right so he's clearly for this assumption there's nothing wrong with saying that there is knowledge generally that's completely consistent with christianity someone says well van till's inconsistent here because he he's allowed assumptions but unbelievers aren't no that's false unbelievers can have all sorts of true assumptions they just can't do it in their worldview that's just to say that the christian worldview is the only worldview that can make sense out of those yeah like wittgenstein had wonderful insights in in language games but it only works in a christian worldview right and that's not a weird assertion that's i mean you're talking about transcendentals like that's just then yeah you're just putting christian content within the context of a transcendental form of argumentation which is not weird it's not odd it's not unique to christianity transcendental arguments are legitimate arguments and have a long history um i may i say that because a lot of people will look at presuppositional argumentation and say oh this is just a weird argument you presuppers invented actually transcendental argument has a history even outside the context of a christian uh apologetic yes no okay so from there we can we can infer christianity is true we've made good and what van till said we should do and we've done it with epistemic certainty christianity is true what does that mean the plain teachings of christianity are in accordance with reality now there's a clear distinction that i'm sure you probably are going to say but just in case you don't um because i'm reading some of the comments here there is a difference between proof and persuasion yes so proving the argument doesn't mean someone's going to be persuaded by the argument but the possibility of someone not being persuaded by the argument doesn't make the argument superfluous we still even in our argumentation would acknowledge the work of the holy spirit to convict the person's heart all those sorts of things so yes there's no inconsistent with giving positive arguments in favor of or indirect arguments uh in favor of some proposition um and also acknowledging the work of the spirit to ultimately um you know change the heart well and this can happen even not even with christian um not even not not not even in the context of work needs special grace but just common grace right so uh girdle who i love uh kurt girdle great great logician mathematician of the 20th century his incompleteness theorems were not accepted by many wonderful mathematicians right or very talented and they rejected it did that undermine his proof no no and not at all so so uh i may not persuade you and that's out of my control you know i can't um but that doesn't mean the proof isn't a good yeah well excellent that's awesome let me just do a one quick uh recap here okay sure go for it okay it'll go quick all right so i'll just skip that all right so vaccine seven and theorem four we get to theorem five which is the proof now some people say well how do you present this plainly or uh in a simple way to children like junior high kids and then high school so i'm all five components if you go back through we hit all five components it is a vantillian proof all right so the first one this is how i would present it to a child christianity is true because without god's love we are lost that's completely consistent summary of of what we just saw in the argument a little deeper would be the world is meaningless and christianity is false but the world is not meaningless so christianity must be true i like it maybe a little deeper and then so we're we're starting very simplistically and now we're just going deeper as the person would dictate right so it's the audience that would dictate how deep you go so the next one would be knowledge has a home in the christian interpretation of the world we cannot show knowledge to have a home in any other interpretation of the world therefore christianity is the only home for knowledge and since man possesses knowledge christianity must be true that's how i'd give it probably to high schoolers if that was just presented very quickly all right i like that i like how you show the different levels there that's good yeah so it'd be those those four now if we're doing this into like a public debate i had to do it in two minutes or something i would probably use i think this is visually uh good to follow and to see how the arguments work in the structure i would memorize i would memorize the axioms in summary fashion and the theorems and i would just walk them through without actually going through the wording on the screen and i would just talk them through the inference that would be more general like i just was sure and i think this would be helpful for people to see and i did it actually in my sunday school yeah and under under two minutes so there are different levels here that you can do with this and but it's important to understand it's the person who dictates how deep you need to go that's right i would never talk to my children at this kind of depth like it's not it's not helpful so that's a good place to stop the well i guess we don't um what i have now for the next 20 minutes is there are a number of things that have that either from teachings from boston and van till or just misunderstood that that they should have cleaned up or people misunderstood what they were teaching that have caused problems uh for example there are two different ways to prove this and they're not the same so i gave what i would call the direct proof i know van till uses that differently he uses that more of an autonomy like direct plus meet autonomy i'm not using it that way um but there's an indirect and i know when i say indirect you're going to think you know the the transcendental argument well i'm using the term differently i think it's helpful to okay differentiate anyway so there are two ways to do this and they are not the same at all and what i found let me just give you a taste of it so many times what happens you say prove the truth truth of christianity we say sure first what i do is i show that christianity is sufficient for knowledge right i call you onto my worldview and i show you that it can interact and make a home for knowledge right we do that first then we go to the unbeliever's worldview and show that he can't right so we first invite him on to our this is they would say this is proverbs 26 4 through 5 we we don't answer him to according to his folly right we talk about our worldview and then we answer him according to his folly reduce it to absurdity you've heard this right like this is a basic and then from there we infer christianity is true right that's tip that's like a very quick but summary argument that's incorrect it's not completely wrong it's just if you if that's clearly all you meant it does not follow that christianity is true so for example the sufficiency of christianity plus the negation of my opponent in the room that doesn't mean christianity is true that just shows that i have an option he doesn't but there could be others but the sufficiency but you show that the sufficiency also demonstrates its necessity but that's okay but hold on so we got to separate these two things though the negation the negation of unbelief i don't i never did that tonight until the end i proved the truth of christianity and then obviously anything contrary to that would be or contradictory to that would be false but the proof i start with scripture go to this efficiency which then leads to necessity and then because we have knowledge it proves the truth of christianity i go directly to scripture and then go to the truth of christianity which i would call the direct method okay now the indirect method is not that the indirect is let's hop onto the unbelieving worldview not just one of them all of them bank till called autonomy sure and so is there a unifying aspect to autonomy that unites all possible anti -christian worldviews okay let's say that there is well you what you'd have to do then is you could say all right and i so i can i can prove christianity without ever going to scripture and it would be vantillian this is where it gets confusing because so we tend to mix these things and they don't go together the second the other way would be if autonomy so let's say that i can prove that autonomy implies a falsehood well what could i infer autonomy is false all right but now we would assume that either christianity is true or autonomy is true well we just prove that autonomy implies a falsehood so we can negate the right side of that disjunction negate autonomy and then we can infer christianity is true without actually ever going to scripture right and that would prove in a vantillian way that christianity is true by the negation of its opposite right okay but if i can negate its opposite and one of them has to be true then it is true okay so these are two i get to the same conclusion without needing the other step so if i have if i have the direct argument i don't need the indirect if i have the indirect i don't need the direct sure you could use both but they are in no way intertwined they're not the same argument and many times when i hear people uh presenting the the vantill's proof they take bits of of the first one and bits of the second one and combine them as as one and and i don't think they mean it to be that way like i think if you pressed them on it they wouldn't they would actually go deeper in but but they don't and bonson bonson does this in his in his presentation so i have quotes where i i quote this i just um anyway so that's the kind of stuff i have for the next 20 minutes that clears up and i go through the circularity part about why transcendentals that the the nature of transcendentals and why how we think it's a problem for boston to go from that god's existence is a necessary precondition or is a next necessary precondition for knowledge and that we must believe that god exists so we're confusing ontology with epistemology and but we're not and but i can see why he would think that um anyway so i have i i can show in a picture what the error that's going on in his reasoning well let's take the time to go through some comments here sure the famous words of the interlocutors of the apostle paul i should like to hear more of this matter uh perhaps at another episode this is a lot to take in and but the visuals are super helpful and um if you don't mind me asking is it possible that you can send me your slides i should like to walk through this myself very slowly to oh yeah i'm understanding everything correctly yeah yeah i would i would appreciate that so i'm gonna i'm gonna minimize this let's take some uh you have keynote eli i'm sorry you have keynote i do i have like apple so everything yeah great i have you asked me how you make good slides i was gonna jokingly but somewhat seriously say well don't use powerpoint okay well hey i'm i'm open to keynotes and keynotes if i can send you the keynote it's much it's much easier to use because all the graphics and everything movements all work sure okay thank you i appreciate that let's take a couple of um comments here maybe we could interact with them uh let's see here uh okay uh tube maven says i've never seen a precept argument actually convince anyone how would you respond to someone who says oh all this stuff yeah whatever it just doesn't convince anybody how would you interact with that i have so i'm not sure so he has and i have so me too i have as well so it's based off his limited empirical data i've actually never i've never seen in person an evidential argument neither have i convince anyone that doesn't mean they weren't later convinced it's true yeah sometimes they just they're they're bricks that add on to other bricks and eventually people come around there's all it's very odd for someone to be convinced in the moment yes already seeking prior to that yeah okay actually it's rare right no i agree scott terry says i love you eli and this is a great episode but you're wrong precept is a defensive meta strategy classical apologists try to rationally force unbelievers to accept god's existence how would you interact with this idea that precept is only defensive so i would define apologetics as setting forth the truth of christian i have this uh this is in my i might slightly you know change the wording here sure but setting forth the truth of christianity over against all contrary propositions that's what apologetics is you're setting forth the truth of christianity over against all contrary propositions any contrary proposition that's what you're doing so you're giving answers for someone trying to promote a proposition that contradicts what you know the bible teaches so if he doesn't if this guy wouldn't agree that apologetics even generally is that i don't know if he would then we're not playing the same game then i don't i don't know what you mean by apologetics so i think generally that's an acceptable definition of apologetics then you say well but what different what's the difference between an evidentialist and a pre -substitutionalist well in that setting forth the truth of christianity over against all contrary propositions we have two different uh buckets of these prop these contrary propositions the first bucket requires a defensive response and that is is trying to show some inconsistency within christianity or an inconsistency between christianity in the world it's saying look if christianity is true it's inconsistent with itself or if christianity is true it's inconsistent with the world those are all defensive responses that you would give and many times the response we give is the same whether we're an evidentialist or a pre -substitutionalist this is why we can read apologetics books by geisler that defends inerrancy and they're good they're good good responses that can be used so many evidentialists are wonderful at some of these responses and we okay but that's the bucket of if christianity is true so we're allowed to assume it's truth and then prove it's not inconsistent with what we see in the world or itself right okay but that but there's another bucket though that says all right even if it's consistent with the world in itself how do you know it's true right and that's the other bucket and that's the more offensive approach and that's where by necessity evidentialist and pre -substitutionalists have to be apart all right thank you for that scott also goes on to say we don't force people to believe in god because of our savvy wit and intellects do you believe uh as a presuppositional apologist or an apologist in general that uh people are convinced because of savvy wit and our intellects uh i don't they can be because god i think god uses all sorts of i'm sure people get converted in mormon churches by a certain preacher who emphasized unknowingly probably a certain part of his of his doctrine that was actually true but he didn't say it correctly let's say right and he emphasized it but he said it in such a way that was very winsome okay now could god use that winsome presentation to pull someone into the kingdom well sure sure he could do that so so we don't force people to believe in god oh sure we don't force people to believe in god for with anything we can't so it doesn't have to be savvy wit or intellects it could be anything we can't force people to believe believe in god regardless of what we're using but i would say though maybe this is i would say uh we and we downplay this um having being able to articulate what you believe well i do think god rewards that so i don't think that's that's indifferent to i think just like god uses good teaching to change children um he also uses that to to convert unbelievers sure absolutely uh thank you so much for the encouraging words child of the king thank you for making precept more understandable eli you're a blessing people you don't even realize are being blessed i very much appreciate that and i very much appreciate the guests that i have on who helped me uh make precept more understandable i have my own teaching style others have their own and hopefully they're all contributing to a better understanding of the presuppositional method um be encouraged while presuppositionalism is not the major apologetic methodology and we often hear people say well it doesn't work or this i have seen the opposite i've seen presuppositionalism being used terribly i've seen presuppositionalism being used wonderfully and it actually um allows conversations to go much deeper at the foundations where things need to be and i've seen people um god use those arguments and this method to bring glory to himself in various ways so uh so keep the faith keep pushing along and um uh regardless of what people are saying let us stay true to what uh what i take to be a method that is um very much reflected in the scriptures themselves so um thank you so much for those encouraging uh words can i just say one thing yeah absolutely so in the last i've been a vantillian for 13 years and i think it's really hard to find community where you can talk through these things just for you know iron sharpening iron and have an outlet and i think your page is wonderful for that so if you're ever discouraged about your work don't be you're doing great work and i very much appreciate that and i very much appreciate you coming on uh hopefully people can re -watch this and take their time and plow through it because i think the slides are very very helpful they're very well done and easy to follow so um i'd love to have you back on in the future we can cover a related topic or expand on what you've already discussed or um just cover objections in general i think that would be excellent if you'd be willing to do it yeah nope that would be i i would um go in through the richard howe objection i think with transcendental i can probably yeah actually you know what let's do a show where we just address some of his objections i think that'd be great yeah i going through that would be a good because it's just so commonly brought up and yeah absolutely very good well i appreciate it man uh let me just um uh put this back up on the screen just to remind folks if you're looking to support revealed apologetics and you've been blessed by the content uh this is one of the ways you can do it um you can sign up right now in the revealedapologetics .com

01:42:11

website click on precept you um and rsvp your your spot to your ticket rather for the epic online precept conference where i'll be one of the speakers along with dr chris bolt dr jason lyle matt slick and joshua pillows um trying to raise money for the ministry as i said before things can be a little expensive running the back ends of these sorts of things and updating um equipment and subscriptions and things like that so it would be greatly appreciated and i you will be blessed as well as the topics i think are important and will give you a more firm understanding of the presuppositional approach in the various ways that it can be applied so folks can sign up for that there are eight days left to sign up the conference is on november 12th and it will span from 10 a .m

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to 4 30 p .m with the speakers having um uh different time slots in which you'll click the link and see the the individual speakers well without without further words i have nothing left here um to say um but i just want to thank one uh thank john one more time thank you so much for coming on this is a lot of fun and i'm looking forward to doing things with you in the future i think yeah this is great this is great and from one bonson nerd to the other um i'm really jealous of your your uh unpublished bonson collection in the back there it'll be made available someday all right well perhaps the lord won't cut the lord will will tarry a little longer for that yeah yeah we'll get into eschatology right now well well where can people find uh find you have a channel yourself is there anything where you write is there a place where people can find you so right now i'm focusing on mainly doing a few presentations but stuff i've been wanting to do for a while so i'm going to try to prove that young earth is a plain teaching of scripture okay well that'll be at lbc in april lancaster bible college in lancaster pennsylvania mark farnham's uh school dr farnham school and so that takes it takes a lot anyway so what i'm doing right now is i'm i was doing a lot of researching and creating over the last decade and now i'm going to start making presentations and getting them online all stuff that i want to develop and i think are all unique things to sure until uh another other stuff so if you but all those will be posted on my church's website christ church twin cities so if you go to earn the youtube page so if you go to the youtube page uh there'll be they'll pop up you know over time and we'll post them and and then if it might email if you have questions or you want to interact uh on some i do prefer dialogue in either through a zoom or phone call rather than i don't like doing i don't like doing comment debates or neither do i it feels like you put so much work into it and then it just gets nowhere and it's just too time -consuming i just like to talk to people have you ever read uh out of the center no um peril andrea by cs lewis no so it's the it's the the cosmic trilogy of the space trilogy he wrote out of the silent planet peril andrea and that hideous strength it's a wonderful trilogy you should read it uh but there's the the unmanned in the in peril andrea and basically all he exists to do is to annoy the and the protagonist of the story and to engage with him is to enter into his folly and it's the most beautiful picture i've ever seen of of that kind of opponent and i think the unmanned his home his most natural home are comment sections on youtube and facebook threads that's where he lives in breeze that's where he swims that's hilarious i try to avoid the comment section for the most part but there's some uh my channel my channel people tend to behave and i appreciate that so sometimes i do try to read uh the comments but i just don't have time to interact with all of them so i do apologize but i do appreciate my listeners and once again let me just give the email really quick for sure go for it give the email uh jkaus12 at gmail .com